Sunday, December 4, 2011

1917 revolution by Lenin

1917 revolution by Lenin was the historical event. However,on that very day Vladimir Lenin sat for his mathematics paper in the school-leaving examination. A classmate wrote later, “We were all terribly agitated. Only Vladimir Ulyanow, seated behind his desk, wrote calmly and unhurriedly. We had six hours for doing our papers. Vladimir finished his work earlier than the rest of us. He was the first to leave the examination Hall.” Vladimir stood first in the examination, and won a gold medal.

In the next few months and years Vladimir thought deeply about his brother’s fate. He had heard about revolutionaries in the past. But he had always thought. “Alexander can’t be a revolutionary. A revolutionary can’t give so much time to the study of worms. Now Vladimir wanted to know why Alexander had given away his life. From the writings of the great poets and novelists, he now turned to history and politics. He read about the revolutions in America and France. He felt that Russia needed a revolution too. He wanted to be a revolutionary himself.

In 1887 Vladimir went to study at the University of Kazan. At Kazan he learnt about the ideas of the great German thinker, Karl Marx. Vladimir settled in the city of St. Petersburg as a lawyer. Vladimir and his comrades went to the factory workers, found out for themselves how they lived, and taught them how they could improve their life. They wrote pamphlets for the workers and distributed them in the factories. Vladimir wrote many pamphlets himself. The police soon arrested Vladimir.

Krupskaya

Vladimir was sent to Siberia. It was so far away from St. Petersburg that the prisoners in Siberia were not kept shut in. Vladimir lived in a small house. Krupskaya, a revolutionary who later became his wife, stayed in the same house. They read books together and talked about the sufferings of the Russian workers. In the evenings they went out for long walks. Vladimir was a good hunter, and there were hares in the woods. One day Vladimir stood before a wood waiting for a hare to come out. His comrades made a loud sound on drums and tins to frighten the hare and make it come out. A fox came straight towards Vladimir. It stopped and looked at him, then slipped away into the woods. Krupskaya rushed up to him. ‘Why didn’t you shoot?’ she asked him. ‘This fox was so beautiful’, he said.

This year 1917 began with strikes and large demonstrations against the Tsar. The police was attacked. Even the soldiers joined the demonstrators. In March the Tsar gave up. Russia came to be ruled by an elected government. Lenin returned to Russia on 16 April 1917. The new government changed nothing. The anger of the people grew. The Bolshevik party, under Lenin’s leadership, organized a worker’s army and secured arms. Lenin spoke at numerous meetings. The new Bolshevik daily newspaper, Pravda (The Truth), carried Lenin’s appeals to the Russian army. There were clashes between the peasants and the police at many places. The soldiers joined the Bolsheviks and disobeyed the government.

On the morning of 7 November 1917, The Bolsheviks occupied the post offices, telegraph stations, banks and railway stations. There was little struggle, for the people working there were already with the Bolsheviks. In the evenings the Bolshevik soldiers surrounded the winter palace in St. Petersburg. The government ministers were inside it. There was fierce fighting between the government troops and the Bolshevik Red Guards. The battle began at 9.45 p.m. with the guns of the ship Aurora fighting a loud blank shot in the air. That was the signal for the Red Guards to attack. The battle began to die down in the early hours of the morning. A new government led by Lenin took over the next day.

The new Bolshevik government had to fight against many enemies over the next few years. On 30 August 1918 a young woman tried to shoot Lenin. With two bullets inside him, Lenin’s wife was in danger. But he became well again and worked hard to give his people peace, food and happiness. Lenin promised a young woman in 1920,

‘Your children will never be able to imagine that there was once a time when one man could own houses, factories and riches when thousands of workers went hungry and no home of their own’.

Lenin died in 1924. His body has been preserved. It lies in a tomb in the Red Square in Moscow. Every day thousands of people walk past his body to pay their respects.So 1917 revolution by was very important for Russian people.